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Commercial Broadcasters beware…

April 17, 2007 — Will O'Connor

The BBC is planning to put one million hours of its past online.

The Guardian reports that Thousands of hours of broadcasting history are to be made available to the public online as part of a plan to open up the BBC’s entire archive to licence-fee payers free of charge.

The radio and TV material, some of which has never been repeated, includes an interview with Martin Luther King filmed shortly before he was assassinated, and another with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in which the former Beatle talks candidly about the impact their relationship had on the band.

It seems the Beeeb is looking to increase revenue streams due to the low license fee settlement last year, charging over-seas users and (potentially) including some advertising.

In a move that will surely infuriate commercial broadcasters, the license-fee based service could start making in-roads in to the commercial world.